Saturday, June 29, 2013

Memory Lane: "It" by Stephen King

I often feel downright guilty about going back to re-read a
book when there are so many others out there that I haven’t read. It’s
especially bad when that book is nearly 1,500 pages, and I know with my limited
reading time, that it’s going to take me a couple of weeks to get through. That’s
why I’ve had Stephen King’s “It” ($9.99, Signet)on my reader for a couple of
years, but put off diving back into it.

Well, at least that’s part of the reason. Another part is
that “It” has stood, for many years, as my favorite modern horror novel. I last
read it as a teenager, though, and there’s always that niggling doubt about how
my 40-year-old self would perceive the tale. Indeed, I did come away with a
different take, but I’ll save that for a little later.

A plot summary is probably not necessary for this book, but
I’ll give one anyway. “It” is set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, where a
lot of bad things tend to happen. In cycles of 25 years or so, really bad
things – and a lot of them – happen. King introduces us to seven kids who are
brought together by a strange bond. They’ve seen terrible things, and they
begin to understand what lies at the root of the evil in the town and plan to
destroy it. Years later, most of them are successful adults in various fields
and have mostly forgotten their childhoods, but when the cycle begins again,
they’re all drawn back to Derry for one more showdown with their old enemy.

Now, back to those perceptions. They are quite changed, but “It”
still holds up if for slightly different reasons.

When I read the book as a teenager, it both sparked
nostalgia and creeped me out. I’ve often said that I woke several times at
night while reading it with Pennywise standing in a dark corner of my room, and
I did. There was also the freedom of being a kid, going out and building
clubhouses and forts in the woods near my house. Spending days sailing along
the trails through those same woods on my bike. It was a lifestyle that I had,
necessarily, left behind, but I was still close to it, and it was one that I
would have very much liked to embrace again. It made me want to go out behind
the house and build another clubhouse, whether there was an evil clown hanging
around back there or not.

It was also the first book that possibly made me aware of my
own mortality. These were kids, younger than myself at the time, making life
and death decisions and showing bravery that I only wished I possessed – even to
this day. There were kids dying horribly. There was Bill losing his younger
brother to the monster. I had a younger brother myself, and it made me think
about how I would cope with something like that. Certainly not as well as Bill
did. Of course, it’s fiction, but it hit me close to home, which explains much
of the impact the book had on me.

Not surprisingly, nostalgia was still a factor 20-something
years later. I still miss those carefree days. Who doesn’t? And it led me to
lament the fact that my own son likely won’t ever get to really experience that
in the way I did. It’s a different world
now. For one thing, there aren’t any woods near where we live that he can play
with his friends – or many friends in the neighborhood for that matter. Where
there are places like that, including where I played as a kid, there are likely
No Trespassing signs stuck up everywhere. He and I spend a lot of time in the
woods, but it’s really not the same experience. So there was some sadness.

While I had a little more trouble connecting with the kid
versions of the characters this time around, I often found some uncomfortable
common ground with the screwed-up adult versions. The connections were so vivid
at times that it made the going a little difficult for me. None of us really
turn out the way that we hoped or dreamed we would. That’s true probably for very
successful people as well as losers, and you can, in fact, be both, as most of
these characters prove. There’s a lot of thought-provoking material about
coping with your own failures, demons and lost dreams in their stories.

I can’t say that “It” scared me or that I received a single
visit from Pennywise during this reading of the tale. But that’s not just a
problem of “It,” it’s an issue with most horror I pick up these days. I guess I’ve
lost most of that sense of child-like belief that I had the first time I read
it. I’m jaded and have seen too many real-life horrors to worry much about a
monster in a book. I’ve been on a quest to find that horror novel that really
creeps me out or even scares me for years without much success. Ironically, the
closest that I’ve gotten to it came from Stephen King’s son, Joe Hill, with his
debut novel “Heart-Shaped Box.”

But though the chills and scare factor weren’t there this
time, I still found “It” to be a powerful and moving book on many levels. Sure,
King does lay it on heavy at times, taking side trips that aren’t really
necessary and providing detail that the reader doesn’t really need. Much like
the first time through, though, I was never distracted by it and never felt it
hurt the story. Though I didn’t necessarily need that information, I thought all
of it helped to build the atmosphere and helped me get to know these characters
better, feel more empathy with them and really feel that I was part of this
small circle.

That, in the end, is the beauty of “It.” Both as a 40-year-old and as a teenager, I
felt part of the Losers Club. I felt that I was in the clubhouse with them,
facing the horrors and struggles, both real and imagined, that they faced. It’s
a story that shows no matter how big a loser you are, there is still the
potential for you to do great – or terrible – things. As I read it, I felt a
strange sense of triumph, one that I remembered from my first reading as well. No matter the
horrors contained in the book – and many are quite gruesome – I came away from
the tale feeling somehow empowered and a little bit better. Hard to explain,
but true.

I needn’t have worried when I started my read. Though the
reasons are slightly different now, I can safely say that “It” remains my
favorite modern horror novel.

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About Me

I am a veteran entertainment writer with a love of hard rock and heavy metal. I've written music reviews, columns and feature stories for several newspapers, Web sites and a national wire service. I've run Hall of the Mountain King in various places and incarnations since 1997.